Intersections between Arts and Environment

Last week I was at an excellent Insights and Ideas event, organised by Creative Scotland and Museums and Galleries Scotland. These events are held regularly and offer the chance for people from the creative industries the opportunity to hear interesting speakers and to take part in discussions over hot drinks and cakes.

Last week's event, which was the first I had attended was on the topic of Creative Carbon - looking at how creative organisations can take on board environmental issues (and how creative projects can offer new ways of looking at environmental issues). As the title suggested it was mostly about measuring and reducing our carbon footprint rather than about biodiversity, though a couple of speakers did talk about the latter topic. There were lots of interesting ideas in the talks and in the discussions. (I was also very impressed by the herbal tea that featured nettle and fennel or some such interesting combination!). Here though, I'll just pick out what were for me the highlights of the talks.

Jeanne Robinson (Glasgow Life) and Kat Jones (RSPB) talked about their partnership work at Glasgow's Kelvingrove Museum. The RSPB Date with Nature project at the museum offers tours, family activities and outdoor field teaching sessions in Kelvingrove Park for school groups, covering topics such as Woodlands, Urban Wildlife and Understanding Birds.

Ben Twist of Creative Carbon Scotland talked about the forthcoming Green Arts Portal, which will be launched early next year and which will allow organisations to measure and improve their environmental sustainability. He also made the very good point that for organisations to truly embrace and act on environmental sustainability they need to have the top level managers totally committed to the idea and put it in everyone's job description.

Hannah Rudman of AmbITion Scotland (a digital development agency for the arts) talked about a lot of interesting environmental arts projects around the country. Here are just some of them:  

* The Revolutionary Arts' Empty Shops Project 'Pop Up People' enables creative people to use empty shops for creative projects on a short term basis.

* The National Maritime Museum project Your Ocean explores the impact of the ocean on our lives and the importance of sustaining it for the future. The exhibition connected to the project has been designed to be as environmentally friendly as possible. 

* The Royal Scottish National Orchestra has put together an innovative performance in the Shetland Islands where groups of musicians played in different venues around the islands but then video technology is used to mean that the whole orchestra comes together in a virtual sense so that audiences in each of the venues get both the live music experience and the full orchestra effect. (I think this is wonderful, because there is something about live performance that is lost in the digital sharing of video links which is preserved here while at the same time the carbon and financial costs of touring are reduced). 

* Set Exchange is a project that allows theatres, film makers and television companies to share sets and costumes. 

So there was lots to think about! I hope to be able to attend some of the future events, though I think they'll often clash with my teaching commitments. 

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more. 

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I have another haiku on Daily Haiku today, you can read it here. 

Haiku Update

As some of you may be aware, I'm one of the featured poets in the current season at Daily Haiku. This week is the second week where every day will feature one of my haiku. You can read today's haiku here. 

I'm also delighted to have two haiku featured in the Haiku Anthology on War, which you can pre-order here. It's an ambitious anthology including 900 poems by 420 poets from 45 countries and features 33 different languages!

Fungi and ladybirds

 I posted a previous, very poor photo of these ladybirds in a previous blogpost. They're orange ladybirds (Halyzia 16-guttata) and there are hundreds of them hibernating in the tops of the fences along part of the Water of Leith.

A couple of days ago Crafty Green Boyfriend and I walked through Colinton Dell, along the Water of Leith. As well as the ladybirds we also noticed this very impressive fungus. 

Crafty Green Boyfriend took the photos in this blogpost.

Food of Ghosts by Marianne Wheelaghan

I don't often read crime fiction, so this isn't going to be a regular crime fiction review. However, having read Marianne's earlier book The Blue Suitcase (which I reviewed here) and having been invited to the launch of Food of Ghosts (a tropical themed event that brightened up a chilly Edinburgh evening) I was keen to buy and read this, Marianne's debut crime novel!

Food for Ghosts is set on Tarawa, a coral atoll in the Pacific republic of Kiribati. It features Detective Sergeant Louisa Townsend, who was born in Tarawa but has lived most of her life in Edinburgh. She has only just got to the island when she finds herself investigating a violent murder case.

I thought the novel was excellent at conveying culture shock with an admirable honesty about the fact that sometimes you don't like the place you find yourself. (I remember this myself from when I first arrived in Malawi and there were certain aspects of the culture which I never got used to in the two years I lived there, much though overall I grew to love the country). As a writer you want to be respectful of a foreign culture you're writing about, but you also want to be honest. In Food of Ghosts the reader can really empathise with Louise's discomfort with the culture shock she experiences, not least her extended family deciding that the best way to welcome her to the island is to camp in her back garden.

Many of you will have realised by now, that the books I review on this blog have some sort of environmental content. Food of Ghosts doesn't have an environmental focus (the rising sea levels that threaten Kiribati are present as an issue only in the mind of an informed reader) and nature is very much in the background most of the time. However, the action takes to the water often enough for there to be several passages about the underwater wildlife, this one showing how the benign beauty of the surroundings can hide a threatening danger:

'It was like being in a massive aquarium, but better: clown fish scurried between forms of red coral; wave after wave of silver slithers did the loop the loop; a bunch of toothy, multi-coloured parrot fish five bombed an oblivious gliding ray. She didn't know how long she's been snorkelling aimlessly  for when she saw the turtle. It paddled on the sea floor before swimming further and further into the cavernous ocean. Curiously, Louisa followed it. The water became cloudy. The outline of the turtle grew fuzzier. Louisa kicked faster. Then it was gone and she was alone in the grey green vastness of the bottomless sea.'

It's a very readable story, set in a fascinating location and with an intriguing cast of characters both Kiribati and expatriate.

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more. 

RIP Humphrey

I was saddened to read that Humphrey, the rabbit at Cottontails Baby recently died.

Humphrey recently won the competition on this blog to find a bunny star for a short story I was writing (which is currently looking to be published). The story will be incorporated into the novel I'm currently working on too, where Humphrey will star alongside Sydney and Tyler from The Qi Papers who won the starring roles in my novel. (By the way, this isn't a children's novel about talking rabbits, it's a novel set in an island community in a future independent (and much flooded) Scotland. Many of the characters keep rabbits both to eat and as pets. The star rabbits are (obviously) pets.)

 Humphrey will be much missed by all the bunny bloggers who enjoyed reading about his adventures as a shop assistant rabbit.

Vintage toys

In a recent post I shared a photo of Peter Rabbit, my first (misnamed) teddy bear, meeting Sylvain, the travelling rabbit who visited us from Cottontails Baby. Lucy commented on how good Peter looks for his age. I mentioned a photo in that blogpost of me holding Peter Rabbit, when we were both about two years old. So when I was at my parents recently, I took a photo of it on my digital camera and here it is - as you can see both of us have changed over the years:

Meanwhile, here are photos of some other, older vintage toys from my family.

 Mum has had Big Ted since she was about three, so he's at least 70 by now.

 Boody actually belongs to an uncle, though he's lived with my parents for as long as I can remember. He's quite threadbare and so Mum made him a little knitted suit, as you can see below.

As ever, red text contains hyperlinks that take you to other webpages where you can find out more.

Misty Trees and spiders webs

We've just come back from a pleasant few days in the suburbs of Manchester, visiting my parents. The first day there it was incredibly misty so we walked to Parr Fold Park and I took these photos.